News & Blogs
New app helps African farmers find the right tree
A new web-based application now makes it possible for small-scale farmers to see the African forests for the trees. Known as the Vegetationmap4Africa, the app enables users to identify vegetation as a way to better understand and sustainably manage landscapes while also ensuring a diverse mixture of species. “The goal of the app is to select […] Continue Reading
Bringing Farming Back to Nature
Farming the land as if nature doesn’t matter has been the model for much of the Western world’s food production system for at least the past 75 years. The results haven’t been pretty: depleted soil, chemically fouled waters, true family farms all but eliminated, a worsening of public health and more. But an approach that […] Continue Reading
India is no longer home to the largest number of poor people in the world. Nigeria is.
It is a distinction that no country wants: the place with the most people living in extreme poverty. For decades, India remained stubbornly in the top spot, a reflection of its huge population and its enduring struggle against poverty. Now, new estimates indicate that Nigeria has knocked India out of that position, part of a profound shift […] Continue Reading
Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change
The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The Paris climate agreement — the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016 — hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one […] Continue Reading
The great African regreening: millions of ‘magical’ new trees bring renewal
Rain had come to nearby villages, but not yet to Droum in south-east Niger. The sand under its stately trees looked completely barren, but Souley Cheibou, a farmer in his 60s, was not worried. He crooked a finger, fished in the sand, and brought out a millet seed. In a week or two, this seed would […] Continue Reading
Earth has more trees now than 35 years ago
Despite ongoing deforestation, fires, drought-induced die-offs, and insect outbreaks, the world’s tree cover actually increased by 2.24 million square kilometers — an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined — over the past 35 years, finds a paper published in the journal Nature. But the research also confirms large-scale loss of the planet’s most biodiverse […] Continue Reading